"Wheel of Life" 8C for Alex Barrows

Alex Barrows has climbed his first 8C, ticking "The Wheel of Life" at Hollow Mountain Area bouldering in the Grampians, Australia. The problem is world-famous for its length of ~70 moves and was first climbed by Dai Koyamada in 2004 and originally graded 8C+.

"It's ~70 moves all told, so a long way removed from normal bouldering, but not quite route climbing either. It's long enough to make Pilgrimage at Parisella's look almost like a boulder problem though!"

Last April, Alex climbed his first 9a - Era Vella - at Margalef in Spain. As a climber with preferences for long, endurance-heavy routes with knee-bars, how did he think Era Vella compared to Wheel of Life?

"In terms of grade I think the concensus nowadays is 9a as a route grade, or 8B+ as a boulder grade; a bit harder if you don't use kneepads, but I sure as hell did! I thought it was probably lower end 9a, not that I'm particularly qualified to give an opinion compared to some of the previous ascentionists. The climbing is probably harder than that on Era Vella, but then it's a million times easier to work so it should be physically harder to earn a similar grade for the overall challenge. Anyway, it's not really about the grade with this thing, it's about it being The Wheel of Life and about it being awesome fun!"

Writing in his blog, Alex summed up his achievement as follows:

"The deep down contentment of doing a problem which I'd heard of for a decade but never dreamed I could ever climb until the last few years, and never expected to climb until the last few days, seems likely to stay around a little while... at least until I find the next project anyway!"

"Wheel Of Life" 8c

"Wheel Of Life" Repeated By Ethan Pringle

According to his 8a scorecardEthan Pringle has, after 3 days of work, done the 3rd ascent of Dai Koyamada’s Wheel Of Life at the Hollow Mountain Cave in the Grampians, Australia. Given V16 after the FA, Pringle registered it as a 5.14d route climb which makes sense since the problem is a massively long 60+ move linkup of several problems in the V9-V12 range. This ascent is especially notable in that Pringle has been recovering from a shoulder injury suffered during 2009 ABS Nationals and is just getting back into form. Looks like he is on the right track.

Here’s some video of Chris Webb Parsons on the 2nd ascent of "Wheel Of Life" to give you an idea the length of this climb: